Vol. xxvi #1

March, 2005

I was 13 years old when they assassinated Archbishop Romero. March 24, 2005, will mark 25 years since his martyrdom, and from the perspective of today I contemplate gratefully the breath of hope and resistance his figure has bestowed on my life. And so, from here at teatro la fragua I want to recall for you that afternoon in May 1979 when I met him. In spite of the cynicism and disillusion the years bring, I still desire to become like him, and I hope that you, wherever you may be, also desire that his spirit live on in you.

--Carlos Mario Castro

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
(Gabriel García Márquez: 100 Years of Solitude)

My grandmother and I arrived at the San Salvador Cathedral at 2 in the afternoon. Archbishop Romero was going to celebrate Mass in the crypt of the Cathedral, a memorial Mass for a priest murdered for his defense of the rights of the poor. My grandmother was an avid disciple of Archbishop Romero, one of those many elderly women who rarely missed one of his Sunday homilies, even if they had to travel long distances to get there. I don't know how she had first met him; probably it was when Archbishop Romero was simply Father Romero, pastor of the main church in San Miguel. Or perhaps when he was Bishop Romero of the diocese of Santiago de María.... I don't know how it began, but my grandmother was ensnared by Monseñor Romero's style of preaching, by the clarity and the force with which he spoke; and from then on she had followed him from parish to parish.

People slowly filled the pews of the Cathedral crypt. Archbishop Romero appeared in his priestly vestments: the people stood and formed a human pathway to receive him with a sustained applause. He walked solemnly, his crosier raised high, sprinkling blessings while he approached the altar. At the moment he passed in front of us, my grandmother took my arm and stretched it forward so my hand touched him, then she guided that hand to sign a cross on my forehead and my breast. It was a curious and significant rite: curious because it was a custom my grandmother had taught me to observe only when asking favors of the images of saints in churches, and significant because the action indicated that Monseñor Romero represented something more than the humble bishop who at that moment was passing by. With time I have come to understand that my grandmother was telling me, in her simple but profound language of faith, the same thing which later Ignacio Ellacuría would state in less simple wording: that in those moments God was passing among us in the person of Monseñor Romero. Or put in more secular language, that the presence of Monseñor Romero in our lives was the presence of an exceptional model of human being.

Every Sunday my family turned the radio on early. The aroma of tamales and coffee floated in the air, mixing with the cadences of the simple, valiant and clear voice of Monseñor Romero: his Sunday homilies were broadcast to the whole nation. I can still hear the applauses of the congregation in the Cathedral when Monseñor Romero said something with which they were in agreement. Those applauses, which haven't been heard since, were the symbol of the friendly proximity of a unique bishop with his people.

One Sunday my grandmother took me to one of those homilies. The Cathedral was jammed. There were a lot of national and international journalists; important, well-dressed people; and many humble and poor folk. I ended up sitting on the floor at the foot of the pulpit from which Monseñor would speak. I was in the midst of a group of children; around us were tape recorders of journalists and of ordinary people who wanted to record the homily. Monseñor spoke of God as the God who loves justice; he spoke of the project of Jesus to construct a society based on love, justice, peace and tolerance. He spoke of Christian conversion as the fruit of a sincere encounter between God and humanity. Monseñor dedicated one section of the homily to a summary of notable things which had happened in the country during the week: that the army had invaded such and such peasant village and disappeared persons for their links to Christian groups or to popular organizations; that along such and such highway the legal aid society of the chancery had exhumed corpses with evident and cruel signs of torture. Monseñor Romero was clearly moved by the outrageous abuse suffered by many humble people in different parts of El Salvador. That was what motivated him to try to shine the light of the Word of God in the darkness of a society blinded by class hatred. He tried to signal the way for those who were lost in the mirages of power, of money, of violence; he hoped to sow the seed of a better tomorrow in the lives of those innumerable Salvadoreños who are the eternal victims of the grossly unequal distribution of wealth.

Many of us who were then children wanted to be like Monseñor Romero when we grew up. He became our model of what a Christian and a human being should be, a reference point to which we turned to encounter the beauty of values like honesty and solidarity with the victims of history; to fight with perseverance and conviction to make the complex human village a fraternal place where love is the rule and not the exception. The figure of Monseñor Romero became for us the ideal of what a person can be; he was someone whose human values we tried to follow and cultivate in ourselves to reach a fuller and more authentic human condition. We played at being Monseñor Romero: we dressed in sheets and dramatized his Sunday homilies.

Time has passed and many things have changed. The Cathedral and El Salvador are no longer what they were when Romero touched our lives. Nor are we who were there then the same persons. The children have become adults; the adults have become old folks, memory, dust. And at the same time the figure of Romero has been globalized, reaching into distant and diverse hearts who have encountered in his life and his message a diaphanous fountain of inspiration and hope. Monseñor Romero represents the lucid conviction that it is worth fighting for humanity, much as the trendy wisdom may preach that this is the hour of pessimism and despair. His message is even more vital today as the ranks of the indifferent swell; today, as the collaborators of the powerful multiply; today, as the arrogance of money continues to sow the seeds of egoism and intolerance and injustice.

On one of those days that have passed by, my grandmother died. Hers was a long and silent agony. But I am sure that, in that unconsciousness which slowly creeps into Death, she, like Aureliano Buendía facing the firing squad, remembered that remote afternoon in May of 1979, when full of hope she took me to the San Salvador cathedral to meet Monseñor Romero.